Whats In The Box

Opening your Fitbit Blaze package is reminiscent to opening an iPhone box. The box quality itself is high quality and tells you just purchased an outstanding product. Inside the box you will find your Fitbit Blaze in its wristband and its charging cradle. Surprisingly, this Fitbit does not include a wireless sync dongle for your desktop like other Fitbit’s. Could this mean Fitbit is phasing the dongle out and pursuing an all phone interface? Honestly, Fitbit’s mobile app is amazing and the GYMCADDY™ team never found a reason to sync past Fitbit models to a desktop.

Setting Up Your Fitbit Blaze

Setting up your Fitbit Blaze is super easy. If you previously had a Fitbit then set up will be even easier and faster. First you have to take your Fitbit out of its wristband and leave it to charge. Then you'll download the Fitbit App to your phone and follow along with the onscreen instructions. This will include a series of taps and a little waiting for the newest firmware to install on your Fitbit. Once thats said and done you're all set to go.

First Impressions Using the Fitbit Blaze

Rejoice! The Fitbit Blaze stock wristband employs a classic watch buckle which means putting it on is much easier than other Fitbit models. Aside from the watch buckle, theres much more to admire about the Fitbit Blaze. First lets start with build quality. Just like other Fitbits, the wristband here is made of a high quality plastic with a soft touch feel to it. The wristband also has a textured pattern to it which makes it look and feel great. The Blaze also features a metal octagonal frame thats both stylish and low profile. In an emerging market where competitors are selling over sized square or round faced smartwatches its refreshing to see what Fitbit has done with their’s. We just wish the buttons on the sides on the frame wouldn't wobble so much. Its also super easy to switch out bands thanks to the sliding mechanism that holds the metal frame and wristband together. The Blaze also features a color touch screen that shows the user a lot of information at a glance. Stats include Steps Taken, Heart Rate, Calories Burned and Time. You can also scroll through the options and get a more detailed breakdown of your daily performance like you would in the Fitbit App. The Blaze also allows you to manually set the type of exercise you're about to do so it can track your stats a little more precisely. Types of exercises include Running, Bike Ride, Weight Training, Treadmill, Elliptical, and Workout. This Fitbit also features FitStar, which is basically a personal trainer on your wrist. The FitStar workouts consist of bodyweight exercises which are great for anyone looking for a workout but are away from the gym. The Blaze also features heart rate monitoring, and after testing we found it to be very accurate. But the Fitbit Blaze does so much more than just track your fitness activity, it pairs with your phone to show you notifications from your phone like Calls, Text Messages, and Calendar Events.

The Fitbit App

Playing around with the Fitbit app is fun. You can play around with settings like Activity goals, Exercise goals, Nutrition and Body Goals, and Sleeping goals. In the Activity Goals tab you can set amount of steps taken in a day, distance walked or ran, Calories Burned, Active Minutes, and Hourly Activity Goals. In the Nutrition Tab you can change goals like water intake, caloric deficit goal. Finally in the Sleep tab you can change your Time Asleep Goal, Bedtime, and Wake Up Time. Your Fitbit will then wake you up by vibrating when it feels its the best time to wake you up with in a 30 minute window of your selected wake up time. We highly prefer this wake up alarm as opposed to your standard audio alarm. Just make sure you have a back up alarm if you're a heavy sleeper.

The Fitbit App also includes a food logging journal which is reminiscent to MyFitnessPal. It can help you track your caloric intake and will give you a good sense of calories consumed vs calories expended through exercise via graphs and charts. It gets the job done but it fails to give you detailed macro tracking like MyFitnessPal. If you're looking for a detailed breakdown of your daily macros we suggest you stick to using MyFitnessPal.

The Fitbit App does give you a detailed breakdown on your sleep. It tells you how many hours slept, and it'll also tell you how many times you wake up at night. Knowing the quality of your sleep can help you on your fitness journey and help you achieve your goals. If you know you're waking up multiple times at night then this might be a good call to action to analyze your diet, caffeine consumption, workout schedule, or any stress that you may be experiencing in your daily life.

Final Impressions

The Fitbit Blaze is truly a great fitness tracker. It displays detailed information at a glance and the heart rate monitor is very accurate. Unfortunately no product is perfect. The Blaze advertises a 5 day battery, but in real world use we found it to be more like 3.75. We also found the charging method to be a little odd. In order to charge your Blaze you must remove it from its wristband every single time. We would have preferred wireless charging like other smartwatches on the market but we also understand that would lead to a thicker design. The touch screen responds well most of the time but on occasion it does act up. We would also like to see Fitbit release a few more clock face options for the Blaze. We would also welcome a larger screen but again, we understand that would lead to thicker design. Finally, we would like the notifications on the Blaze to be kept up to date with the notifications on your phone. Blaze will continue to show the user old notifications in its notifications tabs even after its been interacted with on the phone. You have to manually dismiss old notifications so the notification tab isn't over flowing. We know this is an easy software on Fitbit’s part and look forward to the update.

In conclusion, the Fitbit Blaze is a Fitness Tracker first and a Smartwatch second. Fitbit prides itself on being the industry leader in fitness trackers and with good reason. The Blaze is well built and features high quality materials. Its sleek and low profile design are both stylish and unique. The octagonal watch face will shine in a sea of square and round faced smartwatches. It is also very accurate. The GYMCADDY™ team had an overall pleasant time using the Fitbit Blaze and will gladly recommend it to anyone in the market for a high end fitness tracker.